When Canadian immigration officials in New Delhi began to notice the same guests appearing in photos of different weddings submitted as evidence for sponsoring overseas brides and grooms to Canada, an alarm went off.

Officers at the visa post pulled out all the other spousal sponsorship files to compare notes, and further investigations would discover several local temples were actually involved in "rent-a-guest" operations, setting up wedding ceremonies for immigration purposes.

"At a price, you could get packaged services with a wedding ceremony where people stand in as guests and relatives, posing for photos as in a real marriage," said immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, who obtained an internal government report on these allegations through an access to information request.

"The officials started to see the same faces over and over again. They called in people for questions. When they couldn't answer these questions, it became apparent that something was not right."

To crack down on those using phony marriages to come to Canada, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, according to news reports, is now sending investigative teams around the world, especially to high-fraud regions such as India, China and Vietnam, to gather intelligence on staged marriages.

Immigration officials would not confirm the establishment of such overseas teams.

India and China are high fraud regions for immigration, according to this article. India and China are numbers 1 and 2 respectively for source countries of immigrants to Canada. They also make the top ten list for refugee producing countries and family sponsorship.

How many immigrants have engaged in fraud and scammed the immigration system is not certain but the practice needs to stop and the one to stop is Canada. The country needs to police it borders more effectively by stopping this nonsense perhaps going so far as to strip any immigrant of his or her Canadian citizenship and immediately deported if it is discovered they engaged in a scam of any sort to get into the country. If these people are willing to be this dishonest with Canada it just how much respect they have for this country.

Sunday, 25 May 2008

Not surprisingly I didn't read this in the Toronto Star. Gotta sustain the illusion of multicultural harmony I suppose.

Canadian Turkish group fears violence

May 24, 2008By GLENN KAUTH, SUN MEDIA

The head of the city's Turkish association is bracing for more violence after a bloody fight between rival groups at a west-end cafe.

[...]

Police have now ruled that the fight that sent three customers of the Ankara Cafe to hospital wasn't ethnically motivated. Tan, however, believes otherwise.

"There is a political issue behind it, definitely," he said.

"It has a Turkish-Kurdish relation as well, definitely."

[...]

The attack happened around 4 p.m. Thursday when a group of up to 25 armed men stoned the cafe at 15960 109 Ave., breaking its window.

Angry Kurds blamed their fellow Turks for instigating the violence, but Ankara Cafe owner Tugay Doksuz said the fight actually began earlier as a heated discussion between a few people seated inside.

[...]

While Doksuz believes the incident was the first of its kind in Edmonton, Tan said growing Turkish and Kurdish immigration to the city, particularly from Toronto, has led to a number of skirmishes in recent months.

A few weeks ago, he noted, a minor fight broke out during a soccer game in which a Kurdish man insulted a player wearing the jersey of the Turkish national team.

Aggravating the situation is the large number of Turks and Kurds who come to Edmonton for construction work, leading to rivalries between firms bidding for jobs, Tan said.

In Turkey, the two groups have a history of animosity, particularly due to a bloody bid by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) for self-rule in the country's southeast.

Canada has designated the PKK a terrorist organization, but Tan said the group has both members and sympathizers in Edmonton, including many who have moved here from Toronto.

This reminds of the inter-racial clashes in Woodbridge, Ontario - a town just north of Toronto across Steeles avenue - in 2005 that left one South Asian youth dead. Italian immigrants first settled in the Rexdale area of Toronto in the post-war years. They eventually moved across Steeles Avenue into Woodbridge and now that town boasts a 50% Italian population. The void the Italians left in Rexdale was filled by South Asian immigration in the 1970s that continues to this day and neither group, Italian or South Asian, cares for the other.

This also reminds me of the Air India bombing, the largest mass murder in Canadian history, where Canadian Sikhs killed Canadian Hindus.

I am also reminded of the time in the 1990s when riot police were called to Mel Lastman Square to sustain order as tensions rose between Greek Canadians and Macedonian Canadians when erstwhile mayor of North York, Mel Lastman tried to raise the Macedonian flag.

If a Canadian is a Canadian then why do these ancestral animosities continue in this country? Why the ethnic tensions and occasional outbursts of violence?

Maybe we should smarten up and accept the fact that a Canadian is not a Canadian after all.

It took a minute for the news to sink in. Then she called her husband of 14 years, demanding to know if what she had just been told was true – that while she spent a year in Egypt raising their four children in a more Islamic environment, he had used it as an opportunity to marry not just one, but two other women in Toronto.

"Yes, I'm married," he said, quashing all her dreams of their future together.

He told her he was married in a small ceremony 20 days earlier, officiated by Aly Hindy, a well-known Toronto imam, at his Scarborough mosque.

[...]

"Polygamy is happening in Toronto; it's not common, but it's happening," said Hindy, imam at Salahuddin Islamic Centre.[...]In the past five years, Hindy said he has officiated or "blessed" more than 30 polygamous marriages; the most recent was two months ago. Even some imams in the GTA have second wives, he added.

"This is in our religion and nobody can force us to do anything against our religion," he said. "If the laws of the country conflict with Islamic law, if one goes against the other, then I am going to follow Islamic law, simple as that."

Those who condone the practice rarely let their views be known, and those who practise it themselves tend to do so in secret, making it difficult to record how many such marriages have taken place in the GTA. Equally hard to determine is how many polygamous families have immigrated to the country, despite a 2005 report commissioned by the federal Status of Women that tried to find out the extent of polygamy and its implications.

[...]

Under the Criminal Code, polygamy was deemed a crime in 1892. Those who enter into reside in, or officiate a polygamous union can be charged with a criminal offence and face up to five years in prison.

But the last time polygamy was prosecuted in Canada was more than 60 years ago. Fundamentalist Mormons in Bountiful, in southeastern British Columbia, have managed to get away with openly practising polygamy, believed to be an integral and necessary part of their faith, since the 1940s with little legal recourse.

Polygamy has been in Canada for more than a hundred years, brought here and still practiced by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) out in Bountiful British Columbia. No legal action has been brought against them because it is well understood that polygamy as practiced by the FLDS will be supported by the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. So the government feels that it is better to ignore them, marginalize them, and hope that they go away because the consequence of addressing their polygamous acts may result in the legal recognition of polygamy.

However, polygamy is also sanctioned in Islam. The influx of Muslims into Canada only compounds the numbers of those involved in polygamous unions and will push the need to address this issue more so than the FLDS because the FLDS are a small insular community that can easily be ignored. Not so with Muslims whose numbers far outweigh those of the FLDS sect and who have been practicing polygamy long before the settlement and foundation of Canada.

If Canada is truly committed to multiculturalism then who are we to deny Muslims the legal recognition of polygamy? We already changed the definition of marriage once to accommodate one vocal minority group - the gay and lesbian communities - so who are we to discriminate against those who want to redefine it again to include multiple spouses? If you believe in multiculturalism and support same sex marriage laws, both of which I think are mistakes, then you have no choice but to accept the legal recognition of marriage. Otherwise you're just a hypocrite.

If you are opposed to polygamy then its time to rethink the multicultural model.

Saturday, 24 May 2008

See? I'm not the only one who thinks so. Read it here at the Ottawa Sun.

Limit Muslims' access to Canada, book says

By PETER ZIMONJIC, NATIONAL BUREAU

Large influxes of Muslims, the failure to integrate foreigners and an overrun immigration system make Canada a "threat to North American security."

These are some of the findings published in a new book by the right-wing Fraser Institute called Immigration Policy and the Terrorist Threat in Canada and the United States.

The book says Muslims, as a group of potential immigrants, should be given limited access to Canada.

[...]

Co-author James Bissett, a former head of the Canadian Immigration Service, says Canada needs to better screen potential immigrants from Islamic countries to ensure they are non-violent and respect "Western values".

[...]

The book also argues that by allowing in large numbers of Muslims -- the authors estimate Canada's Muslim population was 700,000 in 2006, up from just over 250,000 in 1991 -- Canada has created sub-societies that do not integrate and shelter extremists.

[...]

The Fraser Institute calls for a review of immigration policy, especially the refugee and asylum system. The book says Canada's immigration backlog is so badly managed that it encourages foreigners to claim asylum and then overstay their entry visas.

I don't see why Muslim should be continuously centered out. The concerns are real and warranted but they can also be applied to other immigrant groups as well. Canada shouldn't allow the large influx of any one group regardless of where they come from. When it comes to immigrants a cherry picking approach is preferable.

An Australian-style system for selecting skilled immigrants that includes mandatory English testing and credential assessments could be the answer to Canada's classic newcomer conundrum: the doctor who ends up driving a cab.

Or so a new study suggests.

Australia and Canada once had similar criteria and "points" systems for selecting immigrants in the skilled category – and similar outcomes.

But Australia fine-tuned its screening system over the past decade, and its degree-holding newcomers are doing much better than those arriving in Canada, said the new study to be released today by the Montreal-based Institute for Research on Public Policy.

The fact that Canada and Australia had similar selection systems that produced similar results is an indictment against Canada's immigration system. It means our system is seriously flawed and is need of correction. But what kinds of corrections should Canada undertake?

Based on census data, Lesleyanne Hawthorne, a renowned migration policy researcher from the University of Melbourne, found that about 65 per cent of migrants with a university degree who arrived between 1996 and 2001 had jobs within six months in both countries. Of those in professional fields, only 30 per cent had found work in their field within five years.

Having a job is not the same as having a job within your field. Though 65% found work within six months of arrival we cannot count this as a success without details as to what jobs they found. A professional engineer from India working part time as a security guard in Canada is considered employed but is not employed in his field. We shouldn't consider this a success story yet this is an all too common a story of immigrants who throw away their careers and waste away their skills in Canada at jobs for which they are over qualified.

However, since 1999 Australia has simply excluded an increasing number of applicants thought to be at risk of not getting jobs in their field, through stringent English testing and assessment of their credentials by authorized bodies.

Australia has also tweaked the way it allocates points for things like education, age and work experience, and has shifted its emphasis from "altruism to pragmatism." Based on labour needs, additional points are granted to applicants with skills that are in demand and to those who have Australian-certified qualifications or experience.

By 2005, initial employment rates for Australia's skilled immigrants shot up to 83 per cent.

For reference purposes the study the article is reporting on is called The Impact of Economic Selection Policy on Labour Market: Outcomes for Degree-Qualified Migrants in Canada and Australia and it was commissioned by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Statistics Canada and Service Canada.

There are a few things we can learn from this study that Canada should implement to fix its immigration system.

The first is that Canada should lower its immigration intake. This isn't stated in the article but it is implied by the fact that Canada has the highest immigrant intake in the entire world with never ending calls to increase the numbers. If Canada sincerely desires to repeat Australia's success then we should allow the same proportion of immigrants per capita to Canada as Australia does.

Canada should also access the language skills and job skills of immigrants entering Canada via the skilled immigrant stream by Canadian professional governing bodies before they are allowed to land in Canada. This can be done at Canadian consulates around the world where standardized tests developed by Canada's professional and labour groups can be administered to potential immigrants. This would curtail the amount of "credentials fraud" in countries like India where degrees can be bought and not earned. Canada should only allow those immigrants who pass the tests into the country. And, a passing grade on the tests would give the immigrant credential recognition and a running start when they arrive in Canada.

Canada should cater its immigration system to current labour market needs and not projected ones based on an outdated and arbitrary points system. Projected labour market needs are based on assumptions that are not always valid let alone come to fruition whereas current labour market are real and observable. There is no sense in bringing in IT specialist from India when there is a shortage of plumbers.

Canada should also severely restrict the family reunification class to spouses and dependent children and that's it. Too many unskilled relatives of working age who have neither the language skills or the job skills to succeed in Canada have entered the country through this class of immigrant because job skills and language skills are not stressed in this class. This is a case where pragmatism defeats altruism. To allow in a skilled immigrant and then his or her spouse and dependent children is pragmatic. To allow this individual to sponsor unskilled uncles, aunts, nephews, brothers, sisters, parents, etc. is altruistic. Canada's immigration system is not an extension of the foreign aid program. The immigration system exists to benefit the country and by implication its citizens and not to satisfy the materialistic fantasies of foreign people.

Six senior editors will bring their talents to new assignments in the Star's newsroom starting today.

And who might these six senior be?

Janet Hurley moves from entertainment editor to deputy city editor, reporting to city editor Lynn McAuley and working alongside deputy city editor Mo Gannon.

Alison Uncles becomes associate editor, Living and Entertainment, where she will be directly in charge of six sections a week and oversee Desi Life magazine.

Desi Life magazine is a quarterly journal published by the Toronto Star and is dedicated to South Asian culture in the GTA. In other words the magazine reports on the imported Indian pop culture from which most Canadian South Asians, even first and second generation ones, draw their collective identity from because they have no real domestic culture of their own. That being the case I agree with the Indian government in considering these people Non Resident Indians (NRIs) as opposed to being Canadian, or British or American or what have you, even though some of them were born here. But now that I think about it I guess they are Canadian in the sense that lacking any real domestic culture of their own, South Asian Canadians find themselves looking to their ancestral lands for a semblance of some kind of collective identity. The truth is that Canada has developed aspects of a domestic Canadian culture whereas there is no such thing as South Asian Canadian culture.

In any event, I find it funny how those good folks at the Toronto Star thought that someone with a WASPish name should oversee the magazine's publication. But the joke doesn't stop there.

Doug Cudmore returns to the newspaper as Entertainment editor, reporting to Uncles.[...]John Ferri becomes assistant managing editor, Weekends, responsible for the Saturday and Sunday editions, while Graham Parley takes on the job of Weekend editor[...]David Darnell joins the editorial department as senior editor, digital production, and will "bring his considerable skills and knowledge to website production and leadership," Kuntz said.

The Toronto Star published the pictures of these senior editors and I can assure you they are all white. That's right. The "voice of the GTA", the GTA being, arguably, the most racially, linguistically, religiously, and culturally diverse piece of real estate on the planet, a fact the Star likes to champion, choses to staff its most senior levels, writers, and columnists, with a predominately white staff. If the Toronto Star is the "voice of the GTA" then that voice is white, privileged, and middle class, a slap in the face to the reality of the city.

So if the editors at the Toronto Star continue to extol the necessity of an out of control mass immigration system (while estranging themselves of the predictable negative consequences), the benefits of multiculturalism at the expense of Canadian culture, and the social justice found in a diverse work force, then perhaps the paper should practice what it preaches. Failing that the paper is just the "voice of hypocrisy" and the editors should Just Shut Up!

As Canada's refugee backlog continues to grow, asylum seekers from the United States are appearing prominently on the radar for the first time, ranking fifth among other top refugee source countries in the world.

[...]

Refugee board spokesperson Charles Hawkins said many of the American claimants were born in the United States to illegal migrant parents from other countries, mostly Mexico and Haiti, who are not bound by admission restrictions to the country.

[...]

While these U.S. claimants are listed as Americans, their claims are processed with their parents but also weighed against their circumstances south of the border. It's not surprising that the group yielded only a 5 per cent acceptance rate. Rejected claimants are generally returned to their homeland or last country of residency.

[...]

Mexican nationals do not need a visa to enter Canada and therefore aren't subject to the provisions of the Safe Third Country Agreement, a bilateral accord that since 2004 has denied refugees who landed first in the U.S. the right to file claims in Canada, and vice versa.

In 2007, Haiti, whose nationals are protected by a moratorium on deportations from Canada – and thus are exempt from the accord – ranked second with a total of 3,713 claimants, followed by those from Colombia (2,636) and China (1,462).

Accompanying this story is a list of the top sources of refugees for Canada.

TOP 10 SOURCES OF REFUGEES FOR CANADA

Countries, number of refugees and acceptance rate in 2007

1. Mexico: 7,047, 10% accepted

2. Haiti: 3,713, 50%

3. Colombia: 2,636, 78%

4. China: 1,462, 65%

5. U.S.: 968, 5%

6. Sri Lanka: 811, 88%

7. Nigeria: 762, 44%

8. India: 557, 12%

9. Israel: 395, 17%

10. Pakistan: 359, 50%

Source: Immigration and Refugee Board

Some things to take note of. Note the acceptance rate, at 88%, for Sri Lankan refugees. That's 88%! Also note Colombia at 78%.

Mexico tops the list and we should ask ourselves why? From what persecution are they fleeing from.

Note how Israel is in the ninth spot. That's an insult to Israel. Jewish groups in Canada have warned the government that they are economic migrants abusing the refugee system.

Also note how India, China, and Pakistan are on the list. These countries are also on the list of top ten sources of immigrants to Canada as well as top ten sources for family reunification.

What I am driving at is that our refugee system is being abused by economic migrants, in some cases they are middle class immigrants dressing up like women to secure a spot on a lifeboat to escape a sinking ship. Fleeing poverty is not a legitimate reason to file a refugee claim so they cook up some story. What infuriates me about this is that this inflicts a terrible disservice to those who are actually fleeing real persecution. It is also incredibly taxing on the public purse.

Canada needs to invoke the notwithstanding clause and repeal the nefarious Singh decision. That's the first step needed to stop the abuse.

Immigrant and ethnic groups in Canada are proud of their national and ethnic heritages, secure in the fact that they are the dominant group somewhere in the world. Some even have national aspirations of their own seeking to carve out a country where their culture, language, and history is the national identity.

Canadians are expected to posses none of these things. It seems what is good for the goose isn't good for the gander. Two recent stories published in the Toronto Star help to illustrate what I mean.

The first one can be read in full here. It tells the tale of a Canadian's efforts to protect the fledgling state of Israel in 1948. He is proud of the establishment of the Jewish state and its accomplishments since then - accomplishments largely subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer - but he offers some reservations about Israel's demographic future.

Margolese, 84, has come a long way from the somewhat sheltered 24-year-old who set out from Manitoba six decades ago, determined to risk his life for the Zionist cause.

[...]

When he looks to the future, Margolese is even more anxious about the Holy Land's steadily swelling population of Arabs, whose ranks are increasing more quickly than those of Israeli Jews.

This is what some call the regionn's demographic "time bomb" – a slow-motion explosion that may well pose a more serious threat to Israel's existence as a Jewish state than the seven wars and two Palestinian uprisings it has survived so far.

"They're growing slowly but surely," said Margolese. "They're doing to us what we did to them. We did it with immigration. They're doing it with birth."

When figures reveal that the Canadian population is increasingly foreign born and that visible minorities are forming a greater segment of the population this is usually hailed in the media as a good thing. However, when Jews in Israel are courting minority status due to the increasing number of Israeli Arabs this is something to be taken with concern. Why the difference?

Here's more.

Meanwhile, Israel has transformed itself into a modern and mainly prosperous land, where vineyards, orange groves, and date palm plantations alternate with high-tech industrial parks.

Those gains have come at a great cost. Today, while Israeli Jews celebrate their six decades of independence, Palestinians remember 60 years of sorrow, bloodshed and loss.

Why? If Palestine were Canada we would be celebrating the diversity the Jewish immigrants bring. We would welcome minority status for the host population as a progressive and positive inevitability. So why are Palestinians sorrowful when Canadians are supposed to celebrate?

The exile Tibetan community offers another example of the double standard. You can read the whole story here.

'At home' in Little Tibet

In numbers of about 1,700 and growing, Parkdale Tibetans find comfort in their burgeoning community and the culture they're preserving

May 15, 2008 04:30 AMPaola LoriggioStaff Reporter

In the last decade, more than 3,000 Tibetans have moved to Toronto, making it the largest Tibetan community in North America, according to the Canadian Tibetan Association of Ontario. Of those, roughly 1,700 settled in Parkdale, which had no Tibetan residents prior to 1996, according to Census data.

[...]

"It's only going to grow," said Norbu, who projects the population will reach 10,000 city-wide within five to 10 years.

Most Tibetans say they came to Canada because it's easier to apply for refugee status than in the U.S, particularly since 9/11. But they also acknowledge the snowball effect: once a few Tibetans moved here, others followed.

"Tibetans come here (to Parkdale) because it's easy to find a place to live, and Tibetans are here," said Lhakpa Tsering, who came to the neighbourhood from India two years ago. His wife and two children were already here.

Not only is it easier to apply for refugee status in Canada than in the U.S., it is also easier to apply for refugee status in Canada than anywhere else in the western world. Everyone in the developing world knows, and I mean everyone, that if you want to make a refugee claim Canada is the place to do it. We have the laxest and the most abusable refugee system in the entire world. Also, Canada shouldn't be accepting Tibetan refugees who arrived here from India. To do so is an insult to India. India is a safe country for asylum seeking Tibetans.

"When I first started to stay in this area, I feel like I'm still at home, because I still see all my friends, all the familiar faces who talk the same language," said Kunga, now a board member of the Canadian Tibetan Association of Ontario.

He said Parkdale Tibetans are cohesive and work hard to preserve their culture, partly out of fear for the future of their homeland, which has been under Chinese control for a half-century.

"I used to fear that Tibetan culture would be destroyed outside of Tibet," he said. "Now I fear Tibetan culture will disappear more in Tibet."

That last quote is telling. The intention inherent in that statement is the preservation of one's culture in another's cultural space. When taken to extremes the introduced culture overwhelms the host culture and the host culture is effectively replaced. This is at the heart of the concern over a future Arab dominated Israeli state, the loss of land by the Palestinians, and the colonization of Tibet by the steady introduction of Han Chinese by the Chinese government to overwhelm and pacify the Tibetan people.

What these people have in common are aspirations for national sovereignty to preserve their language, history, and culture. What they all express is sorrow or anxiety over the loss of their lands and their language, history, and culture. And how does this loss come about? By a demographic shift manifested by immigration and/or by being out-bred by an internal segment of the population. The Palestinians lament the loss of their land by Jewish immigration. Now the Jews lament the loss of Israel by the higher Arab birth rate within Israel. The Tibetans are lamenting the loss of Tibet by Chinese immigration, a weapon of pacification being employed by Beijing.

So why are Canadians to be harangued for expressing the same concerns because of mass immigration and multiculturalism? Why the double standard? Why is it expectant of Canadians to be "multicultural" and embrace its tenets yet immigrant and ethnic groups are allowed, and encouraged, to remain uni-cultural within the Canadian cultural space? How is a unique Canadian identity to be forged within such an environment let alone be preserved? Why do immigrant and ethnic groups champion a multicultural Canada but don't care for such a thing occurring in their home countries? Do they not see that multiculturalism is to Canada what assimilation is to them? That being cultural death.

It seems Canadians are not allowed the development, propagation, and preservation of a Canadian cultural identity. We are supposed to put away such aspirations so that introduced peoples may develop, propagate, and preserve their respective cultures within Canada. When Canada becomes increasingly more Asian that is a good thing. When Israel increasingly becomes more Arab that is a bad thing. When Tibetans immigrate to Canada and colonize portions of it that is a good thing. When Chinese immigrate to Tibet and colonize portions of it that is a bad thing. The list goes on and I hope I've made my point.

Friday, 16 May 2008

After more than nine decades, the federal government is set to apologize for preventing a shipload of would-be Indian immigrants from landing in Vancouver.

In Surrey on Saturday, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity Jason Kenney said Ottawa would provide $2.5 million in grants to commemorate the two-month standoff with the Komagata Maru. An apology could be read in Parliament this week.

[...]

In 1914, the Japanese charter ship Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver harbour with 376 migrants from India. Immigration officials refused to let the passengers disembark, using the continuous journey regulation which required migrants to arrive in Canada directly from their country of origin.

The ship was forced to anchor in the harbour where it stayed for two months before finally returning to Calcutta, all the would-be immigrants still aboard.

Superficially this appears to be another story of racism and discrimination but if we look at the historical context surrounding this event we can reasonably conclude that the government at the time did the right thing.

In order to understand why those aboard the Komagara Maru were not allowed to land we must first investigate as to why the Chinese Head Tax and Chinese Exclusion Laws were enacted. You can read about it here, here, here, and here. Simply put, these laws were enacted to protect west coast labourers from the negative effects Asian immigration was having on their livelihoods; a frustrating situation that was at the root of the 1907 Vancouver Asiatic Riot.

The arrival of the Komogata Maru off the coast of British Columbia in 1914 found itself in the wake of these earlier events. It is reasonable to assume that successive waves of Indian immigrants would have followed if the Canadian government allowed those aboard the Komogata Maru to land and take up residency. This would have flooded the B.C. economy with cheap excess labour, the kind of excess Chinese and Japanese immigration was producing with the attendant negative effects on the wages of Canadians living in the province. The Canadian government's priorities rest squarely with the welfare of its citizens and if Asian immigration to British Columbia was adversely affecting the living standards of Canadians in that province then the government did the right thing by refusing the illegal immigrants aboard the Komogata Maru the right to land. Read more about it here.

The main problem with the apology is it implies that what the government did at the time was wrong. Taken in its historical context the government acted and did what was best for those Canadians who would be negatively affected by their landing. Denying the landing of the passengers of the Komogata Maru, and thus controlling immigration, was the right thing to do and the apology is therefore unwarranted.

The apology also restricts the government's options by causing it to second guess its acts at controlling our boarders when similar incidents arise. How can the government act to control the flow of illegal immigration when it has officially admitted that it acted wrongly in the past?

The apology also suggests that protecting the livelihoods of Canadians is not a legitimate reason to restrict and contain immigration. That is wrong.

But if we read the CBC piece further we realize that this apology is insincere.

On Friday the federal government also offered $10 million to the Ukrainian-Canadian Foundation to support initiatives marking the First World War internment of Ukrainians and people from other eastern European ethnic communities in Canada.

Also, on May 13 the government moved to recognize the Ukrainian famine as a genocide. You can read about it here at CTV News.

The federal government on Thursday offered $5 million to the Chinese-Canadian community in grants for commemorative and educational projects related to immigration restrictions.

Again a wrong move because they will only present a one sided story filtered through a Chinese Canadian lens. In other words you will not get the whole truth. See the links concerned with the Chinese Head Tax and Chinese Exclusion Laws above for more.

So on May 8 the government doled out "$5 million to the Chinese-Canadian community in grants for commemorative and educational projects related to immigration restrictions." Then, the next day on May 9 they doled out "$10 million to the Ukrainian-Canadian Foundation to support initiatives marking the First World War internment of Ukrainians and people from other eastern European ethnic communities in Canada." Then on May 12 Ottawa promises an unwarranted apology to the Indo-Canadian community for the Komogata Maru "incident" while doling out "$2.5 million in grants to commemorate the two-month standoff with the Komagata Maru." Then on May 13 the Conservatives act "to recognize Ukrainian famine as a genocide." This is clear cut ethnic vote pandering and that's why the apology is insincere. Just throw the seals some fish and watch them clap.

The Harper Conservatives are a minority government angling for ethnic block votes to win a future majority. So, they are apologizing for Indo-Canadian votes. That's it! There is no other reason. It's for votes and of course we Canadians pay for them out of our pockets with tax dollars doled out here and there for some grievance or another and it seems Canadians are getting fed up with it. Read the comments that follow the CBC article and you'll see what I mean. They are quite revealing.

No apology is necessary. The government did the right thing given the circumstances and acted with the interests of Canadians in mind. The Canadian government owed nothing to those aboard the Komogata Maru who were not Canadian citizens and were challenging Canadian immigration laws with their illegal act. The government of today should be taking notes, not giving hallow apologies.

Thursday, 15 May 2008

Mark Steyn was in Toronto recently and made appearances on various shows. Thanks goes to SDAMatt, who I believe is affiliated with small dead animals, for his efforts.

Here is Mark Steyn on The Hour with George Strombopolous. He makes an interesting observation in this interview regarding Canada's Orwellian named Human Rights Commissions. In essence he said these kangaroo courts evolved to provide more work for the people who's livelihoods depend on them effectively turning human rights issues into an industry where free speech has become collateral damage. He also makes the very true observation that Canada has effectively turned the third world into a nursery to produce the children Canadians can't be bothered to have (mommy needs a career, an SUV, and yearly vactions before baby gets a new pair of shoes I guess). This is a demographic reality the government should be addressing before taking the cheap and easy route and import more people.

Here is Mark Steyn on The Agenda with Steve Paikin. As you watch this you better take the names of the lawyers who are perusing their human rights complaint against Mark Steyn because if this confrontation is any indication of their legal skills then I can assure you they are lawyers you will never want to hire. As one youtube commenter said "I thought law school was supposed to teach you how to argue", well so did I and I guess we are wrong. It seems good law schools do not always produce good lawyers and here's the proof. It makes me wonder how some even get into law school in the first place.

Though Mark Steyn concentrates his critiques on the rise of Islam in the west much of what he says can be applied to mass immigration as a whole. What is happening in Europe, as Mark Steyn observes, is population replacement; the replacement of the host populations with an introduced one. The same thing is happening here but Islam is only part and parcel of a greater phenomenon where the taming of the host population is mutually beneficial. Canadians are being replaced, our country surrendered, our cultural identity erased, our collective histories forgotten. These are inevitable consequences of mass immigration and multiculturalism.

In one of the interviews above Mark Steyn mentions a fellow journalist at the National Post named George Jonas. He describes how this man fled communist Hungary and came to Canada not because he felt that Canada needed to be more like Hungary but because he wanted to come to Canada for the democratic country that it is and become a Canadian, not just Canadian in passport only. A similar sentiment is expressed by Neil Bissoondath in his book Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada, a book I highly recommend.

In the interviews Mark Steyn champions multiculturalism on the grounds that it brings choice to a people. The example he uses are Thai immigrants bringing choice to a boring small town where only rye bread sandwiches can be bought for lunch. I counter that out of that boredom comes innovation and out of that comes a local culture. The introduction of Thai cuisine into their diets only makes the culture more Thai and less local. This is the problem of multiculturalism and why it is a hindrance to the growth of a unique Canadian identity.

However, though Mark Steyn seems to favour multiculturalism on one level he does have some strong words against it as can be seen in this video.

He accurately states that multiculturalism is a belief in nothing because a belief in everything is a belief in nothing. Applying that to Canada, if every culture is equal and is just as Canadian as hockey, butter tarts, and maple syrup then there is really nothing that is Canadian and there is no such thing as a Canadian for to accept that the Canadian exits then you admit that they have a culture, a history, a language, a country, something that can be experienced and you cannot have that if multiculturalism is to survive. For the sake of multiculturalism the Canadian must be sacrificed.

There is more to the videos then what I have chosen to comment on. They are worth the time to watch especially for those concerned with the attack on free speech in this country under the guise of human rights. This is something we should all be concerned about, Canadian or immigrant because it won't be long before immigrant communities start to use these commissions against each other. To critique and voice an opinion is necessary for a democracy to work. What kind of country will Canada become when Sinhalese Canadians start to charge Tamil Canadians for human rights offenses when Tamil Canadians publish the alleged abuses by the Sinhalese Sri Lankans in order to raise public awareness and bring about change? How will exiled Tibetans get their voices heard when pro-Beijing Chinese Canadians charge them with hate speech under Canada's dubious hate crime laws? What these Orwellian named Human Rights Commissions are being used for is to squash criticism, strike fear in dissenting voices, and stifle debate so that only one side is heard and that is not democratic.

Canada's border agency's failure to track down 41,000 illegal migrants may be only the tip of the iceberg as an unknown number of people simply overstay in the country after their visas expire, a security expert warns.

With the federal government's rapid expansion of the temporary foreign worker program, many of these overseas workers may just want to stay here – legally or not – after their work permits end and simply go underground, said Martin Collacott of the Fraser Institute, a national conservative think tank.

[...]

Ottawa issued 106,750 temporary foreign worker permits in 2006, and 103,000 were issued within the first nine months of 2007. The number is expected to grow with various measures introduced by the Harper government to make it easier for Canadian employers to bring in workers from abroad.

A report released by Auditor General Sheila Fraser on Tuesday said there were 41,000 individuals – mostly failed refugee claimants – facing immigration warrants for removal whose whereabouts were unknown to the Canada Border Services Agency, up from 36,000 in a similar audit five years ago.

It can be hard to toss a failed refugee claimant out of the country because of the many legal safeguards in place to ensure a person is not detained or removed without cause or due process. Safeguards include judicial reviews and stay of removal applications at the federal court or pre-removal risk assessments by border officials themselves.

Officially Canada accepts 250-260,000 landed immigrants a year but unofficially it is much higher than that as implied by this report, somewhere around 300,000+. Canada has the highest immigrant intake in the entire world, a fact stressed further by illegal immigration. By initiating programs that grants temporary entry to foreign individuals without the mechanisms to monitor and remove these individuals is an invitation for abuse just like our refugee system is.

It is becoming ever more clearer that we, as Canadians, have lost control of our borders and by doing so have surrendered our sovereignty. The uncontrolled inflow of people and the inability to remove them is tantamount to an official surrender.

Aside from shaking down the expatriate Sri Lankan Tamil community in Canada for war funds, a community largely made up of middle class economic migrants exploiting the laxest refugee system in the world, the Tamil Tigers targeted Canadian politicians for support. Read it here in the National Post.

Tamil Tigers trying to influence politicians: CSIS report

Group waging a 'propaganda campaign'

Stewart Bell, National Post Published: Tuesday, November 06, 2007

TORONTO -- The Tamil Tigers have been waging an intensive "propaganda campaign" in Canada to win the backing of politicians, says a newly declassified intelligence report.

[...]

"The main targets of the campaign in Canada have been the expatriate Tamil population, politicians and the general public," says the report by the federal government's threat-assessment centre.

The report was obtained by the National Post yesterday after several Liberal MPs attended a ceremony on Monday honouring a Tamil Tigers guerrilla boss killed in an air strike.

The Liberal party is pathetic like this. For the sake of Tamil bloc votes, votes that can swing an estimated 6 ridings at least, they will attend a funeral for heads of a terrorist organization that uses child soldiers and pioneered suicide bombing that even employed the use of a pregnant woman to achieve its nefarious ends. The funeral concerned can be read here. The Liberal MPs in attendance were John McKay (Scarborough-Guildwood), Jim Karygiannis (Scarborough-Agincourt), Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke-Centre)who once suggested Canada should negotiate with Hezbollah, and Maria Minna (Beaches - East York). They say they are there to support "peace" but who are they kidding? Keep in mind the Liberal Party for years refused to list the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization even though most of the civilized world did. They were afraid they might lost Tamil support if they did even though Tamils here seem to display irritation at the Tigers ways raising funds all the while lending the Tigers some support. Strange.

The lobby campaign aims to portray the Tigers' independence struggle as legitimate, the intelligence report says. But it calls violence "central" to the guerrillas' strategy. "As well as conventional guerrilla warfare in Sri Lanka, the LTTE uses terrorist activities to achieve its goals."

The report also says that in addition to political lobbying, behind the scenes the Tigers use more unsavory methods to advance their cause in Canada.

"The LTTE's responses to external criticism and internal dissent have included beatings, death threats and smear campaigns in Canada and elsewhere, and specific and non-specific threats of harm against Canadian citizens and residents, their businesses and possessions, and their relatives in Sri Lanka," the report says.

The real concern here is that immigrant groups bring there wars here and fight them here in some fashion or another be it Barbar Khalsa International, Sein Fein, or the LTTE. It seems they didn't flee the fighting, just expanded the front lines. If the financing of foreign wars is done on Canadian soil then Canada becomes a legitimate target with Canadians caught in the middle.

The following can be read here in the National Post. It was written by the consul general of Sri Lanka in Toronto so if the reader harbours some skepticism about its content then I wouldn't be surprised since a war of any kind also has a propaganda front. But the same can be said of Sri Lankan Tamils who, as a predominately refugee community in Canada, have a vested interest as portraying themselves as a persecuted people which shouldn't be confused with discrimination.

Let's be clear -- Tamil Tigers are the terrorists in Sri Lanka

Bandula Jayasekara, National PostPublished: Thursday, April 24, 2008

One cannot compare the democratically elected government of Sri Lanka to a ruthless terrorist organization such as the Tamil Tigers (LTTE), which has killed thousands of innocent Sri Lankan Tamils, Sinhalese, Muslims, Malays and Burghers. The Tigers are also responsible for murdering democratically elected Sri Lankan Tamil leaders such as foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, deputy secretary general of the peace secretariat Ketheesh Loganathan, Jaffna mayor Sarojini Yogeswaran and minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle.

More than 60 % of Sri Lankan Tamils today live peacefully among the Sri Lankan Sinhalese. Democratic Tamil United Liberation Front leader V. Anandasangaree cannot even go to his constituency office since the Tigers threatened his life. Another Sri Lankan Tamil minister, Douglas Devananda, has escaped nearly 13 assassination attempts by the LTTE. It is not the Sri Lankan government that poses a threat to Sri Lankan Tamils, but terrorists who claim to speak for them and then resort to brutal violence when Sri Lankan Tamils dare to say otherwise.

I totally and categorically deny Ms. Selvarajah's allegation that the government of Sri Lanka is responsible for widespread abductions and disappearances in the country. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is a campaigner for human rights. It is the LTTE which is trying to do such things in the face of defeat and to discredit not only the government of Sri Lanka but the people of Sri Lanka as well.

Sri Lanka will always stand by its people and will protect its citizens against all odds. The world must realize that Sri Lanka is fighting the most ruthless separatist group, one that pioneered suicide bombings and has used pregnant women to carry out such terrorist acts.[...]Misleading the people in Canada and the rest of the world about the nature of the Tamil Tigers and their ruthless quest for power while sitting comfortably in Canada helps no one.[...]

In the war of opinions I have to say I find myself siding with the Sri Lankan government on this one. If Sri Lankan Tamils are such a persecuted people then why do Tamil refugees living in Canada return to Sri Lanka with a frequency to rival the numbers who are feeling it? Sri Lanka's capital city of Colombo is 30% Tamil and was the final home of the late renowned science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. It is far from the fighting and is a relatively safe place for those fleeing the war. Failing that there is the Indian State of Tamil Nadu. I have been following the civil war in the newspapers and most of the cease fires were broken by the Tamil Tigers. It seems Sri Lankan Tamils are "refugees" because of their alleged freedom fighters, freedom fighters who will turn a future independent Sri Lankan Tamil nation into a totalitarian state run by gangsters.

Those who sit on refugee boards should be better informed of world events. If they were more knowledgeable of Sri Lanka then Canada wouldn't have an acceptance rate of 76-80% for Sri Lankan Tamils, an embarrassment for Canada and an insult to Sri Lanka. It is because of the general ignorance of those in the Immigration and Refugee Board that Canada's refugee system ripe for abuse and Sri Lankan Tamils took advantage of it with a vengeance for quick and easy entry into a first world nation. This is why refugees should be determined before they arrive in Canada, a losing proposition for immigration lawyers because they don't get paid. This is also why Canada should invoke the notwithstanding clause and revoke the disastrous Singh decision of 1985.

Recent comments made by Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Conservative MP Jason Kenney regarding racism and reverse xenophobia within Canada's immigrant communities are refreshing. For far too long discussions on racism have always been directed towards the white majority host population but anyone living in Toronto can tell you racism, xenophobia, and fear of "the other", are alive and well in Canada's immigrant communities (well, those of us who live in the real world instead of the leftist fantasies inside our heads can). The following quotes are taken from thisNational Post article.

Minister warns of 'illiberal' attacks on free speech

Kevin Libin, National PostPublished: Friday, May 02, 2008

Addressing the annual gathering of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF) in Calgary, Jason Kenney, a Cabinet member and Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, labelled "dangerous" the "illiberal tactics" employed by some activists in the name of tolerance.

Here he is addressing the Orwellian named Canada's Human Rights Commissions. Visit my links under Protect Free Speech in Canada for more details.

The federally funded CRRF describes its mission as being dedicated to bringing about "a more harmonious Canada that acknowledges its racist past, recognizes the pervasiveness of racism today, and is committed to creating a future in which all Canadians are treated equitably and fairly."

In other words the white majority host population are wholly funding a group dedicating itself to reminding the white majority host population how racist and terrible it really is. The CRRF is an attack group and it's main tactic is to pacify the host population with shame. The irony is that the existence of the CRRF does more to create resentment, promote racism, and heighten hostilities by continuing to highlight perceived wrongs and tell one group how evil they are compared to others. Welcome to Post Trudeau Canada folks.

But here are the quotes that need to be addressed and I doubt the CRRF has even bothered itself to consider the reality found in them:

Mr. Kenney also urged the foundation to devote attention to the "important new challenge" of rising racism within Canada's immigrant communities, where he said some newcomers were bringing with them to Canada their "ancient enmities."

"One challenge that I see emerging, given my frequent daily contact with members of our cultural community and new Canadians, is the challenge of intolerance or sometimes, frankly, hatred, that exists between immigrant communities, often from the same countries of origin," he said.

"I am very disturbed when I ... go to a particular community and one of the first issues they raise is, ‘Why are you letting "X" into this country, why are you letting people of that faith into this country, why are you letting people of that region of my country of origin into Canada'.... I could go to a mosque or a temple or a gurdwara or a community centre or a church, and not infrequently I hear those remarks."

Thank you Mr. Kenney and thank you to the good people of Calgary Southeast who elected him. If you are looking for racism, xenophobia, and fear of the "other" Canada's immigrant communities are the best place to start.

Ezra Levant also attended the same conference and his report is a worth while read because it provides valuable insight into Canada's bureaucratic anti-racism and diversity industries, two outgrowths of the mass immigration industry. Read what he has to say here at his blog. Here are some portions to whet your appetite.

I attended the Canadian Race Relations Foundation conference on Friday. Other than Jason Kenney, the National Post's Kevin Libin, and me, there was only one white male in the audience of 100. I don't think I would have noticed such a thing were it not a foundation supposedly dedicated to diversity. I'll get back to that point in a moment.

[...]

So far, it is still only talk -- but it shows a growing school of thought within the government: Canada's HRCs are out of control, and are paradoxically becoming a menace to real human rights, like freedom of speech.

[...]

As Libin's article mentioned in passing, there was a question and answer session after Kenney's 45-minute speech. Not a single question was regarding his remarks about human rights commissions. Most of questions -- and both Libin and I were stunned by this -- were not really even questions, but hostile comments about the government's decision to boycott "Durban II". That's the upcoming sequel to the 2001 international "anti-racism" convention that descended into an orgy of anti-Jewish hatred that even the U.N.'s Mary Robinson, no friend of Israel or the Jews, called "horrible". I think at least three of the questions on Friday complained about Canada's decision not to attend.

Their questions to Kenney had a mild anti-Israel flavour -- two of the delegates on Friday actually complained about how much they have to hear about the Jewish Holocaust -- but it was nothing more than you'd see at a typical NDP convention these days. But then it hit me: they weren't bitching about Canada's decision not to go to Durban because they were anti-Zionist. They were grousing because the government's decision meant that their exciting, all-expenses-paid junkets to South Africa were cancelled, too.

After reading Ezra Levant's report it became clear to me that anti-racism and diversity are support industries of the immigration industry, all of which are largely funded by the Canadian taxpayer. What I mean by this is that people's livelihoods are dependent on the promotion and sale of diversity and anti-racism. These wouldn't exist were it not for mass immigration and the willful imposition of disparate and diverse people onto the people of a host society.

Since people's livelihoods and careers are dependent on the existence of racism and the promotion of diversity, multiculturalism then, like immigration, is no longer government policy. Having been undemocratically wrestled away by self-interested groups these policies have become businesses unto themselves replete with careers and the promotion and sale of goods and services almost all at taxpayer expense.

The inherent problem here is that these policies now exist to satisfy the needs of the minority irrespective of the needs and wishes of the majority. That's why it is hard to get the government to reduce immigration numbers and to protect Canadian culture from the attacks of multiculturalism because careers and incomes depend on it.

Also, their opinion is unreliable since they are in a conflict of interest much like immigration lawyers are in a conflict of interest when it comes to setting immigration policy. That's why it is a shame when media sources go to these people for a quote or for information as though these are the "experts" on the issues. This leaves dissenting voices marginalized.

Ultimately this is just more taxpayer money diverted to unnecessary and unproductive bureaucratic institutions and organizations that exist for their own sake. The public money these groups draw upon could have been used to benefit the greater good be it job skills programs or health care or education. These organizations are consequences of mass immigration and multiculturalism.

Canada needs to promote an assimilationist nationally unifying cultural vision (which is doesn't) and an immigration system favouring those who would most successfully integrate (accommodation is not integration). Also, Canada needs to promote policies to positively affect the birth rate. The fact that Canada has to rely on immigration is an embarrasment and a shame. Immigration should be complementary, not a crutch.

Sunday, 4 May 2008

All immigrants entering Canada may need to take a mandatory language proficiency test in French or English even if they come from French speaking or English speaking countries. I don't want to say it but I may be siding with the immigration lawyers on this one. You can read it here at the Toronto Star.

Language test angers immigration lawyers

May 03, 2008 04:30 AMNicholas KeungIMMIGRATION/DIVERSITY REPORTER

All immigrants applying to come to Canada as skilled workers – even those who grew up speaking English or French – could soon be required to take a mandatory language test to prove proficiency in one of Canada's official languages, the Star has learned.

Until now, English- and French-speaking applicants – including immigrants from the U.S. and England – could bypass the test by submitting a letter testifying to their language skills. Officials say the proposed change will make language assessments more transparent. But immigration lawyers say the change would only increase delays at a time when the federal government is introducing dramatic changes to reduce an immigration backlog, especially to smooth the way for those most likely to succeed in the job market.

[...]

Currently, applicants in the skilled-worker class with good language skills can earn up to 16 "points" either by taking the International English Language Testing System test or with a written submission. The policy change wouldn't be applied to applications already in the system, or to those in the family category.

To qualify as a skilled immigrant, an applicant needs at least 67 points out of a possible 100 awarded for education level, work experience and family connections to Canada, among other factors.

[...]

But lawyers warn the proposal will be off-putting to people most likely to integrate easily in Canada's labour market, such as the 17,000 Brits and Americans who come each year.

I don't know why the government is considering this. Perhaps some skilled immigrants with poor language skills are scamming the system by getting others to write them a letter to bypass the tests. If this is the case I wouldn't be surprised because Canada's immigration laws are like Rodney Dangerfield, they "don't get no respect." It might be a way to address the cost to taxpayers of state sponsored language classes for immigrants.

But the immigration lawyers are right. The mandatory tests for those from the U.S. or the U.K. is just silly. They will cause delays, increase fees, and thus dissuade immigrants from countries who are the most likely to integrate and succeed in Canada.

If poor language proficiency for recent immigrants is a concern, and it is, it is because sponsored relatives and refugees are exempt from it. Many economic migrants of working age enter Canada through these easily exploitable streams and, under these proposed changes, they are still exempt from language proficiency requirements. In other words very little will change and in fact our immigration system will become worse. Immigrants will still stream in with a very poor command, or no command at all, of either of Canada's official languages, and will still need tax payer subsidized language classes. That is if they take them. The poor promotion of English and French has created communal environments where one can function in this country without having to speak either one. It seems many immigrants learn English or French for pragmatic reasons only.

The expectation that immigrants from the Anglosphere or from French speaking countries is a mistake and the government should reconsider.

Friday, 2 May 2008

I can't speak for the residents of Milton, Ontario so that post title is presumptive. They might not have an opinion of multiculturalism one way or the other but if it mattered a lot to them then they wouldn't be living in Milton. But basing my assumptions on thisToronto Star article I'd say that the residents of Milton don't care about multiculturalism one bit preferring instead small town Canadiana just like most Canadians. Hey, if cosmopolitan and "progressive" journalists can make broad unsupported statements like "the majority of Canadians cherish multiculturalism" then I guess I can too.

Welcome to Milton, the middle kingdom. A town that still boasts a mill pond.

A place where would-be residents can choose between homes with verandas on Court St. or subdivision living near big box stores.

Thirty minutes from Toronto, its backyard is the Niagara Escarpment.

"It's small enough that it feels like a small town, but there's everything here that you need," said Holly Young who, with husband Shawn and their 11-month-old daughter Makayla, moved here last fall.

Judging by the latest census results, plenty of others, much like Goldilocks, also seem to consider Milton just right. While other GTA municipalities are losing middle-income earners, Milton's gaining and can lay claim to being the quintessential middle-class community.

[...]

The town's also seen some big changes – besides the arrival of Wal-Mart or the expansion of the "Milton Hilton," as the Maplehurst "superjail" is affectionately known. Milton grew 71 per cent between 2001 and 2006, from 31,471 to 53,939.

Cheaper housing prices have attracted a lot of people to Milton but many long time residents appear to long for that once small town feel that is slowing disappearing before their eyes. This is illustrated in this comment:

"You talk to some people (about the town's surging population and popularity) and they say, `It's not Milton anymore,'" said café owner Kimberly English. "But you still have that warm, fuzzy thing."

In many parts of Toronto I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when she said "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." Rapid population growth fueled by mass immigration will eventually erase any small town Canadiana feel Mitlon once had just like it is doing to Kleinberg, Ontario. Mass immigration is the steam roller and multiculturalism is the pavement that treads over and obscures any preexisting local culture and history like asphalt over grass.

The gap between the rich and poor widened, and new immigrants continued to lose ground while middle income earners struggled to keep pace, according to the 2006 Canadian census released yesterday.

Nowhere are these national trends more pronounced than in the Toronto area, home to the country's largest percentage of new immigrants.

As a result, median family incomes (the point at which half are higher and half are lower) in the Toronto area dropped between 2000 and 2005 while they rose across Ontario and the rest of the country.

"We are becoming a city of the servant class – who earn servant wages and live in the city's northern suburbs – and the downtown elite who run everything," said University of Toronto urban studies professor David Hulchanski.

This was predictable and should come as no surprise for anyone who took the emotional factor out of the immigration equation. The "downtown elites" are the largely white middle/upper classes who inveterately extol the virtues of mass immigration but refuse to take responsibility of the consequences, choosing to fault the government or systemic discrimination when in fact they are to blame for cheer-leading the predictable outcome while controlling the margins of debate. Toronto's northern suburbs are typically immigrant heavy.

"Immigrants who used to come to this country came for middle-income jobs in construction that were unionized and well paying. Today they can't find those jobs. They are locked out by unions or education we don't recognize, or lack of Canadian experience," he said. "So they clean our offices and hotels and universities, drive our taxis and cook our meals."

If they ask for "Canadian experience" it's just code words for "not hiring". If you think about it "Canadian experience" is vacuous and it doesn't mean anything. Also, if businesses are hungering for skilled workers then why are they not hiring them? Can unions, lack of education, and the nonsensical "Canadian experience" excuse really be the reason? Or is it that Canada is importing too many immigrants than it actually needs?

The income gap in Canada has been widening for a quarter century, according to the census.

Of course other factors are at play but, incidentally, Canada's recent experiment with mass immigration was initiated about a quarter of a century ago. Now, be a good Torontonian and just stick your head back in the sand and pretend there's no relation.

Between 1980 and 2005, median earnings for the top 20 per cent of full-time, full-year earners in Canada increased by 16.4 per cent. By contrast, median earnings in the bottom one-fifth fell 20.6 per cent. Meanwhile, median earnings of those in the middle stagnated, inching from $41,348 in 1980 to just $41,401 when calculated in 2005 dollars.

Recent immigrant men with employment income in 1980 earned 85 cents for each dollar earned by Canadian-born men. But by 2005, the ratio had dropped to 63 cents. It was even worse for recent immigrant women, whose corresponding earnings were 85 cents and 56 cents, respectively.

[...]

In Toronto, middle-income neighbourhoods are disappearing, while rich and poor neighbourhoods continue to grow, said Hulchanski, who has tracked Statistics Canada income data for the GTA since 1970.

Since 2000 in the city of Toronto, only the very top and the very bottom income categories grew, he said. As a result, the city has more wealthy neighbourhoods, fewer middle-income areas, and more very poor neighbourhoods.

For the 905, only the two bottom income categories grew. It has about the same number of wealthy neighbourhoods, a decline in middle-income neighbourhoods and more growth in poorer neighbourhoods since 2000, he said.

According to the census many immigrants are moving to the 905 area, an area outside of Toronto so-called because of the area code (in Toronto the area code is 416). The settlement of immigrants into the 905 area was inexplicably hailed as a good thing but it seems poverty has followed them.

Here's another article from the same edition of the Toronto Star. You'll notice how everything is to blame except mass immigration.

While profound global economic forces over the past generation have impacted the GTA economy, social policy analysts and anti-poverty campaigners say governments have exacerbated the income divide between rich and poor.

From slashing taxes and punching holes in the social safety net to making it harder for professional immigrants to get work in their field of expertise, they say decisions at Queen's Park and in Ottawa have meant that low and middle-income earners have largely missed out on the benefits of a period of sustained economic growth.

[...]

Yalnizyan and others said free trade deals and increasing globalization have lead to a dramatic loss in lower-skilled manufacturing jobs across the GTA over much of the past 20 years. And, in place of those well-paid positions with benefits is a higher percentage of lower-salaried service industry ones and part-time work with few benefits or job security.

[...]

At the same time as there's been no replacement for those good-paying jobs, Lankin and others note there's been a reduction in social programs from both senior levels of government, increasing the divide.

[...]

From free trade deals and World Trade Organization negotiations that failed to better protect our manufacturing sector to the contracting out of government jobs and weakening of union protection, Cartwright said, "middle-wage jobs have become poverty-wage jobs."

[...]

And, he said, given that immigrants will drive future labour force growth in the GTA, it's particularly frustrating that they're still finding it difficult "getting traction" because of questions over their foreign credentials and certification.

Notice the contradictions? If you didn't I'll point them out. The gentleman quoted, which it seems this article is just a vehicle to voice his one sided opinion, said that, basically, good paying manufacturing jobs have been disappearing for the past 20 years and are being replaced with lower salaried service industry jobs and part time employment. Then he said that professional immigrants are having a hard time getting traction becuase of some alleged failure on the part of the business community to recognize their credentials. The real question is to what jobs are these professional immigrants immigrating to if "middle wage jobs" are being replaced with "poverty wage jobs"?

Canada is adopting what Noam Chomsky (this is where all the lefties stop to genuflect) refers to as the third world model and if that is the aim than you're going to need third world immigrants to do it. The Toronto Star's David Olive, in this article sees the United States "becoming the world's richest Third World nation" and thinks Canada may follow.

Mass immigration is driving poverty rates. This is a fact that needs to be acknowledged if anything is to be done about. Immigrants are being imported to be exploited in low paying service industry jobs. They are not being imported to fill unfilled highly paid and high skilled jobs. There are enough Canadians to go around for that. One or two immigrants may find work in their field and then are deceptively paraded around as though they are the trend when in fact they are more the exception than the rule. If we are to seriously tackle poverty in this country we must reduce immigrant numbers as one of several factors. If we don't then we will just compound poverty upon poverty, ever increasing the social ills that come with it.

The third world is not a very pleasant place. Why turn portions of Canada into it?

This one sided puff piece from the Toronto Star is ladened with hypocrisy but it is the Toronto Star after all and it should be expected.

Mexican workers say wages unpaid

Apr 30, 2008 04:30 AMNicholas KeungIMMIGRATION/DIVERSITY REPORTER

A group of undocumented Mexican workers hired to do painting jobs on luxury condos in Greater Toronto claims a Richmond Hill contractor owes them more than $13,000 in wages.

Six of the workers recently filed complaints with Ontario's Ministry of Labour against Com-Kote Interiors Inc., a company that has been involved in commercial and residential projects for clients including Shane Baghai Group, Davies Smith, Goldlist and Tridel developments.

[...]

Maria, who came from Mexico as a tourist two years ago and has been here since, said she was referred to Com-Kote in October through an acquaintance and was promised $12.50 an hour to paint at a condo building near Centre and Bathurst Sts. in Richmond Hill.

"The day before payday, they told me I'd be paid only $11 an hour. In total, I worked there for 302 hours but only got paid $900," said Maria, who asked her real name not be used for fear of being deported.

Maria, 28, was terminated in December because she didn't have transportation to travel to a different work site in Mississauga. She said she is owed $3,070.

She entered Canada fraudulently by posing as a tourist thus implying that she would leave Canada on her own volition at a specified date when in fact she had no intention of doing so. Now, she is in Canada illegally, is working illegally, and when her employer does to her what she did to Canada she cries foul and turns to the law when she herself is breaking the law. Oh, the hypocrisy!

Get this quote from the article:

"I expected more respect of the law in Canada than in Mexico" said Parra, the only worker with the group who has a social insurance number as a refugee claimant.,

The gentleman who made the above quote, according to the article, "has a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications and worked in marketing in Mexico". By that information alone we can assume he is a middle class Mexican. Yet he is also a refugee claimant. From what persecution is he fleeing from? Canada has witnessed a skyrocketing of refugee claims from Mexico, pushing that country into the top spot of refugee producing countries to Canada. I blogged about it here. He is likely part of the wave of middle class economic migrants from Mexico posing as refugees to enter Canada, bypassing the United States as that country is increasingly becoming hostile to illegal Mexican immigration.

So I find it hypocritical of that man to think that Canada should have respect of the law. What respect does he have for Canada's immigration laws? Does he think his fellow Mexicans should also respect the law and go back to Mexico since they are in Canada illegally and working illegally? Probably not.

A labour ministry spokesperson said Com-Kote has received 10 employment standard claims of unpaid wages between 2003 and April of this year, including unpaid overtime, vacation and public holiday pay. Two claims have been investigated and no violations were found, said spokesperson Bruce Skeiff. The labour ministry enforces employment standards regardless of a worker's immigration status.

There are a few things we can gleam from this article.

This first is that Canada should not enforce employment standards when it comes to undocumented workers. This may sound inhumane but if we guarantee paid wages to undocumented workers then we reward abuse of the immigration system.

Second, Canada should financially penalize any business that employs undocumented workers. Undocumented workers are in Canada illegally and are working illegally, making them vulnerable to abuse. Forming a black-market labour force fearful of discovery, they take jobs that pay less than the minimum wage. Their existence is an attack on the most vulnerable of Canadians by keeping wages down and drying up the pool of existing jobs that would otherwise be available and paying the legal wage were it not for undocumented workers. To defend undocumented workers is to attack the poorest of Canadians.

Thirdly, we should not be entertaining Mexican refugee claims.

Immigration advocates plead for compassion in these cases but where is the compassion for Canada's working poor, those who invariable suffer because of illegal immigration and undocumented workers? We must also keep in mind that many recent legal immigrants suffer as well. And, as I have said many times before, that many of Canada's refugee claimants are really middle class third world economic migrants escaping fabricated persecutions. Why reward their deceit?